As the title suggests above, there has been some increased activity art wise and art business in general. I have still got my studio within the old church but the students moved out during August and as a whole in Sept. This last push was made by Blackburn is Open as they believed the cubicles would have been taken over by other artists, but this wasn't the case.
So, the students moved into an old shop in Preston city centre that is owned by the uThink art company and they were excited by this as they thought it was a permanent position but alas, it wasn't to be. They tried to get me involved with the venture but I saw the flaws from the beginning and distanced myself away. This resulted in my lonely tenureship within the church and my becoming in the role of guardian of the building.

The students finally got thrown out off the shop because of a Black History Month exhibition in which I made two pieces called 'Nigger Queer Cunt" which was three typewritten squares of each word repeated until eligible. The concept was to purge each word from my mind and to highlight the obvious contempt of the gay community within black and Caribbean culture. My work wasn't shown and I haven't had any feedback. I discussed my piece to the gallery owbers and they were pleased with the outcome but I think the conclusion to the work spoke for itself.

As well as this work, I was involved with an exhibition held in Sheffield called Play by Sharon Mossbeck and Michael Borkowsky. This show was based on computers and computer programming based artworks and for this one, I exhibited two of my dot matrix drawings. My participation with this show was quite surprising as I have never met either of the two and it was Sharon who saw my work on facebook. She liked my work and suggested that I took part and I'm glad I did. I couldn't go to the opening night as I was involved with another show in Manchester as part of the Free For Arts Festival 2014 - Free For All Exhibition.

For the Free For Arts show I continued the 'the first waves of nothing' installation piece. This is the continuation of the edited prose that I have been working on through the summer and is now reaching its zenith. I basically retype the prose within the gallery where I am exhibiting and with this, the prose evolves with each sitting. I have now exhibited the piece at least three times now and together with the original, I have now five editions. The latest edition was typed at the FFAF exhibition and now is on show at the Soup Kitchen event called Malentandu-Nous magazine. This event is on tonight and I wont be typing the work here as this part of the project has finished and part two has been started.

So with that being the art activity, I have been involved with an ad hoc gallery within the old church which I have called the Corridor. I have had three exhibitions that are a month long. As I work in the studio, I leave the front door open and the public wanders in and I interact with them. I have shown the Lucien Fellowes work with the rusty nuts and bolts and the large scale road side markings, an open/varied exhibition with work that had been left behind by the students and lately, work by a guy called Ted Lynch and some of my assemblages.

The building now holds events such as a Halloween Ball, a rave and this weekend, Back to Blackburn starring Dave Haslam and Wayne Hemmingway. I have had work damaged in both of the former events and I had to take work down for the latter for some reason. I just hope I don't have work damaged at the weekend. There is a committee now involved with the church in which I am involved so I will push the gallery and have my say about the recent events. It is getting quite interesting now as they are so many people wanting there input with the building. I'm just glad that the building is being used and not just shut up, stagnating.

Oh, and lest I forget...Papergirl has now moved to Blackburn. This is the project by Alex Gallagher who sends out invites to artists to create and donate work to her so she can deliver these to the general public in the style of an American newspaper boy. This project has been carried out in Berlin and in Manchester. I visited the Manchester version a few years ago when I was studying there, I participated in the Blackburn one. The exhibition for the Blackburn one was held last week and the handing out of artworks is this Saturday so I look forward to the response to locals from a northern town to free art.

Monday, 18 August 2014

This grave can be found within the graveyard at St John's the Evangelist Church in Blackburn. It is where I am having my art residency and exhibition. It has as much symbology from the Masons that you can shake a stick at. It is pointing straight up to the Masonic Lodge in Blackburn, which is a coincidence.

It has:

The letter G
the Globes of the Stars and the Earth
the All Seeing Eye
the Compass and Set Square
the Arch and Centre Stone
the Jacob's Ladder
the Seven Stars
the Moon and the Sun
the Key to Heaven
The Pyramid
and others that I can't make out.

The ground was consecrated in 1786 with a stone carved with the Blazing Star.

This was the result of the six week long open studio/residency at St John's the Evangelist Church in Blackburn. I decided to work with found wood that I searched for in the evirons of the church. Thankfully, a building was being converted from shops into a mosque so I was able to find some good materials. I have some left over for my next project. In total I have made nine different assemblages for the church but this new one has been a new concept in how I make them. I made the assemblage from the first to last piece found. I quite like this new way of making them.

The Edited Prose is called 'The First Waves of Nothing'. I named it after a phrase that is used in the second installment and fitted in with what I was doing. This piece took me two and a half years and certain piss taking to complete and a further six weeks to type up. I have used tea stained/dyed paper that I have experimented with. I started with too much tea and now know the correct method/times.

The piece is a 22 paged foray into a split second of someone's mind as they walk through the street. It is very schizophrenic in tone. I found it hard to read. The text is wholly grammer free and carries no punctuation.

When I was on my birthday trip to Portmadog/Portmeirion, we stopped at a carboot sale in Tremadog. I bought a selection of glass 35mm photograph slides for a ridiculous price of 50p. Most of these were of some trip or other but I found three gems that depicted a lovely story. Basically, a photo of a car and holiday home, a man washing up and the couple smiling. The photos are dated in the mid sixties and I left them to one side.

A few weeks later, we took a trip to Fleetwood and visited some charity shops. I bought a backlight/batteryless 35mm viewfinder and looked at these slides for the first time in full blown colour. I took the the slides to the local camera shop and in now waiting for the images to be blown up.

I know how I want to present these photos and have a concept/installation planned out and took a mock up photo of what it'll look like. The piece will be titled [domesticity] and hopfully be shown soon. It is a very honest piece of work and is free from all baggage and pretense. I am very excited.

These are selected works from the main members of a newly founded art collective called New Wave Arts [n|w|a]. We were founded at UCBC/Blackburn College to allow art to be shown in unusual places within the Blackburn and its environs. This was our inaugural exhibition and as a duo, Me and Lee Wareing are showing in October within the Free For Arts Festival 2014.

Wednesday, 16 July 2014

It has been really exciting of late. Previously, I wrote of the logistics of the exhibition and the woes of putting on the show. We are now entering the seconds week with having a handful of visitors popping in, the director of Manchester International Festival paying a visit and having a drunken drink and draw burlesque night last night. When I sat there drawing I looked up at the stained glass of the crucifixion and seeing the burlesque dancers contorting and posing, I thought we were going to hell.
the work was curated in a way that we selected disused offices and then placed work within each cubicle. I was quite happy with the work and the opening went quite wildly. I didn't enter in an artist persona so came as myself. I was sober enough until after the 20 strong drum orchestra did their thing with beats reverberating around the room. Everyone seemed to enjoy themselves and we raised £350 in the art auction.
We are now residing in our open studios and working on our site specific work. I am working on my prose, Lee is doing his stencils, Jodie is monoprinting and the others are painting/drawing. We have taken over the old Citizen Advice Bureau so the studios are quite compact. Most of us are there daily and creating work.

Wednesday, 25 June 2014

Since the end of my AA2A and the exhibition that I had at the Blackburn is Open shop in the town centre I have been extremely busy. For some reason, I have been fucked over by UCBC/Blackburn College and not got invited to the conference based on the AA2A, not met Wayne Hemmingway or been given the status of artist in residence because I am classed as a traitor. I had my exhibition outside the parameters of the institution because the management didn't have the ability to understand that a disused and decrepit building was unusable for any event. This is a long story and I am so angry at them.

So, I have been asked to help, facilitate, curate a show involving the 2nd year Fine Art students who I had worked with over the year. The management kept insisting on using this disused building and the students wouldn't allow it so they are now organising their own show at a disused church called St John's the Evangelist. It is a perfect location and the opening night is next Thursday, 3rd July. The only problem is that we having gained entry into the building so we can't tidy up and hang the work. The management at the college are reluctant to sign the essential paper work.

We have a band playing on the night, an art auction, open studios planned and the exhibition itself to show. We have guests invited and a beautiful building to use. This is taking all my time and also, I have just finished my artworks for the show. I'm very tentative about the show already but now I am losing sleep. Well, if the college fails us, we have the management at BiO to help us out and sign the lease, which is superb.